Basic data analysis to understand your hotel guests

Using data to improve marketing efficiency is nothing new but still a widely uncommon practice in hospitality marketing.

These days most hotels regularly run paid advertising campaigns targeted to roughly defined audiences, but with limited understanding of typical customer personas, the only way to increase production is to reduce the price or increase campaign budget.

Grouping customers by characteristics and creating custom campaigns for typical customer personas is far more efficient compared to targeting by age, location or other demographics.

Good news: it is really easy to get started with.

Data collection & developing personas

Start with data collection. Surveying can be done on the website, via emails or on social media. A basic but functional setup only requires a well-designed form, Excel or Google Sheets.

Surveying before a purchase can help to understand why potential clients find your product attractive while surveying after the sale will help to understand typical motivations behind purchase decisions. It is a really good practice to survey after stay which not only provides valuable feedback but also shows guests that their opinion is taken seriously.

Some good questions to ask:

Purpose of travel

Expectations about their travel experience

Top criteria for choosing a hotel

Frequency of travel to the given destination

Interest in services/experiences available in the hotel

Lifestyle preferences

Some responses will be more frequent than others. Grouping these responses will develop basic personas and provide a more accurate understanding of groups of typical customers.

These personas help to understand common groups of customers (and prospective customers) better. This makes it easier to tailor content, messaging, product development, and services to the specific needs, behaviors, and concerns of different groups.

These insights will help to target more accurately, create more relevant campaigns and ultimately to achieve significantly better ROI from the same campaign budget.More in-depth analysis can reveal even more accurately defined market segments and open opportunities to improve marketing further.

Negative personas

There are groups of people who will not become good customers. Without prejudice, it is in the best interest of companies to avoid such groups of individuals.

Conversion rate is a critical metric in digital marketing, including hotel e-commerce. It is essential for hotel management teams to understand how efficiently an e-commerce system can turn visitors into paying customers. In the hotel industry, conversions which occur directly on the hotel website are among the most valuable both in terms of ADR and net ADR, so it is important for hoteliers to master the procedures of providing an excellent booking experience.

Airbnb and Google made notable announcements in the first week of February – the former opening its platform to hotel distribution and the latter rolling out updates to expand and simplify travel search.

Innovation, inventive, inspiring—all things that are “in” with new hotel brands. Or at least, that’s what brands want guests to believe. Are all new brands innovative? Is that even possible? What’s left to invent in the world of hotels? Beyond voice control, what does the hotel of 2030 look like? And what will truly leave guests inspired?

One of the strongest drivers of global economic growth isn’t factories or financial services or internet startups, it’s what we do when we’re not working. We are becoming a planet of tourists. Nowhere is this revolution more dramatic than in Asia.

Aqua-Aston’s website customizes suggestions to users’ preferences. In the process, the company is also amassing user data that allows it to improve its target marketing capabilities, serve up more relevant offers to users and further build CRM and its loyalty program.

When it comes to data, hoteliers make better decisions with depth, not just breadth. OTA-sourced reservations and rate shops produce very basic rate recommendations. To them, a market is “compressed” simply when the OTA receives less inventory than usual from its hotel partners. They can scrape thousands of competitor rates, yet if that’s a hotel’s sole basis for yielding its own prices, it is still largely just following the market.

Online leisure and unmanaged business travel now accounts for 47% of all travel booked in the US, and with each search and click, consumers are generating data that reveal distinct patterns across travel shopping, booking and engagement with advertising